


You Can't Stay (please don't go)

by Dragonflies_and_Katydids



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: (mostly), (sort of), Angst, Fluff, M/M, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2019-09-15 01:52:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16924299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonflies_and_Katydids/pseuds/Dragonflies_and_Katydids
Summary: An older ficlet posted on Tumblr and never cross-posted here. For the prompt, "Cullen following Dorian to Tevinter to become his bodyguard because being part of the Lucerni is dangerous business. Dorian is upset that Cullen did it, but at the same time he couldn't be happier."





	You Can't Stay (please don't go)

**Author's Note:**

> An older ficlet posted on Tumblr and never cross-posted here. For the prompt, "Cullen following Dorian to Tevinter to become his bodyguard because being part of the Lucerni is dangerous business. Dorian is upset that Cullen did it, but at the same time he couldn't be happier."

Interviewing prospective guard captains was supposed to be tedious. It was supposed to involve long hours talking to people he would have to trust with his life but with whom he had little in common, and then longer hours talking to his spies to find out if the most likely candidates had any unfortunate family ties, or even-more-unfortunate debts. Family could be forgotten or scorned or ignored—Dorian would know—but debts had a habit of coming due at inconvenient moments. And when they came due, there was no telling who might end up paying.

Boring the interviews might be, but excitement is exactly what Dorian was trying to avoid by hiring a guard captain in the first place. The Lucerni are all targets right now, and he and Maevaris are the largest. Mae has her own protections, but he hasn’t been back in Tevinter long enough to really establish himself. After two assassins made it close enough that Dorian had to deal with them himself, he finally admitted that a guard captain, with some accompanying guards, was perhaps a worthwhile investment. His life could do with a little less excitement.

Which means that the man currently following Dorian’s assistant into the office is exactly what Dorian doesn’t need, no matter what traitorous and decidedly un-magisterial flips his heart might be doing.

His assistant stops, blinking at whatever she sees on his face. “Is something wrong?” Her eyes flick to the man now standing at parade rest in the exact center of the rug in front of Dorian’s desk.

Dorian gives himself a mental shake and sets down his pen, aligning it precisely with the edge of the paper he’d been writing on. “No, no, nothing’s wrong.” He sounds convincing, because he wants to be convinced. He wants this to be right, even though he knows it isn’t.

But his assistant doesn’t need to know any of that. “Thank you, Lucia, that will be all for now. I’ll let you know when we’re through.”

She gives him a doubtful look but bows herself from his office, closing the door quietly as she goes. The silence in the room is so complete Dorian can hear the latch click, a silence that continues unbroken for a long, painful moment. His visitor stands with his feet slightly apart and hands clasped behind his back, waiting with a trained soldier’s patience.

Dorian breaks first, as he always has when it’s just the two of them, though he manages to keep his tone calm as he folds his hands on top of his desk and asks, “What are you doing here?”

Cullen blinks as if the question puzzles him. “I thought it was obvious.”

It’s so infuriatingly Fereldan, Dorian wants to laugh. Or throw something. “ _Why_  are you here?”

“I thought that was obvious, too.” The corner of Cullen’s mouth is tilted upward very slightly, and Dorian is again torn between conflicting urges, if not the same ones as before.

Since he will not kiss Cullen  _or_  give him the satisfaction of seeing Dorian grind his teeth, that leaves him only the same bland politeness. “I believe we agreed that you would remain with the Inquisition.”

“Did we?” Cullen says, looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “I don’t remember that at all.”

Dorian has been back in Tevinter long enough for the old habits to reassert themselves, and he doesn’t flush or scowl or cross his arms over his chest. The Magisterium would eat him alive if he allowed himself such obvious tells. Not showing his anger doesn’t stop him from feeling it, though. “We discussed it,” Dorian says, absolutely not through gritted teeth. “ _I_  remember that.”

“Do you want to know what I do remember?” There’s no longer even the hint of a smile on Cullen’s face. “I remember saying I would come with you to Tevinter, and you saying you wouldn’t allow me to put myself in danger like that. And then I remember agreeing that we could discuss it in the morning.”

A thread of embarrassment twists through Dorian’s anger, but he ignores it. “There was nothing else to discuss.”

“And then,” Cullen says, as if Dorian hadn’t spoken, “I remember waking up to find you gone.”

“I left you a note,” Dorian says with a coolness he doesn’t feel.

“A note,” Cullen says flatly. “You left in the middle of the night, without warning, and you thought a note would somehow make everything better?”

“I was trying to protect you,” Dorian says, fighting to keep control of his tone.

Cullen straightens out of parade rest and takes a slow step forward. “You were trying to protect me?”

“That was the idea, yes.” Sarcasm has always been his shield, and he sees no reason to stop now.

Another step brings Cullen to the front edge of the desk. Dorian would have to look up to meet his eyes, except Cullen plants his hands on the smooth wood and leans across it. The desk is too wide to put them nose-to-nose, but it doesn’t matter. Cullen’s voice carries enough threat to make up for it. “And what gives you the right to make that decision for me?”

“What?” Dorian asks, caught off guard by the question.

“What gives you the right to make that decision for me?” Cullen repeats, still without raising his voice. “Did I somehow become a child again? Or perhaps the lyrium has left me more addled than I thought?”

“No!” The word bursts out, completely involuntary, horror winning out over years of practice at hiding every emotion. Dorian knows exactly how much Cullen fears that last possibility, and it makes something inside him turn cold to think there might have been even a moment in which Cullen thought it might be true. That Dorian did something to make Cullen think it might be true.

“Then why,” Cullen goes on, quiet and implacable, “don’t I get the right to decide whether a risk is too great?”

When Cullen puts it like that, it’s obvious, and yet…

“I dreamed of you,” Dorian says after a moment, addressing the air beside Cullen’s ear. “After I decided to return here, but before I left.”

From the corner of his eye, he can see Cullen frown in puzzlement and irritation at what must seem to him like a distraction.

“I dreamed of you every night,” Dorian says, his own voice as quiet and perfectly controlled as Cullen’s. “The first night, you burned to death in a firestorm. The second night, a pride demon picked you up and shook you. I could hear every bone as it broke.”

Cullen opens his mouth as if he’s about to speak, but Dorian talks over him. “The third night, one of my charming fellow Magisters slit your throat and used your blood to fuel the spell that killed me.” He smiles wryly, though he wants to scream. “My dreams aren’t terribly subtle, are they?”

“Do you think I don’t have the same dreams?” Cullen asks. He’s still leaning across the desk, and his voice is still quietly intense, but the simmering rage is gone. “I think I’ve dreamed of every possible death you could find.”

“There are so many options,” Dorian murmurs, trying to make light around the ache in his chest.

With a sound that’s half laugh and half sigh, Cullen shoves himself off the desk to stand upright again. “I know,” he says. “I’ve dreamed them all in the last three months.”

Three months. Has it really been three months since he left Skyhold? It feels like three days and three decades, both at the same time.

“I wasn’t going to follow you,” Cullen says, his expression hidden as he scrubs his hands over his face. “I told myself that you’d made yourself clear, and it was no more right for me to chase after you than it was for you to leave without a word. Except the dreams wouldn’t stop, and then Adaar got Maevaris’s last letter….”

Dorian grimaces. No doubt Maevaris told Adaar about the assassination attempts, as if there was anything to be done about it from Skyhold.

“Did Adaar send you?” Dorian asks.

“I sent myself,” Cullen says. He’s still hiding behind his hands by rubbing at his face, which is becoming a weaker excuse by the moment. “I had a few things to wrap up first, but then I came as fast as I could.”

For the first time, Dorian takes in what Cullen is wearing, from the battered leather of his boots to the rough wool of his cloak. They’re a soldier’s clothes, made to withstand hard use rather than to impress anyone. When Cullen has left Skyhold in the past, he’s always been aware that he represented the Inquisition. He might complain that his collar choked him and that the colors of his tunic were garish, but he still allowed himself to be dressed like the Inquisition’s commander.

There’s no Inquisition insignia on anything he wears now.

“If you want me to leave,” Cullen says, “I will.”

Before Dorian can answer, Cullen drops his hands from his face at last and deliberately meets Dorian’s gaze. “But don’t tell me to leave because you think you need to keep me safe.”

Dorian’s heart is hammering in his chest, and he’s torn between doing what he wants to do and doing what he  _should_  do. “Tevinter isn’t safe for you.”

“Neither was Skyhold,” Cullen says. “Or Kirkwall. Or Kinloch Hold.” He says it calmly, without choking on the names, and Dorian has to fight to keep himself in place. “Do you think your Magisters scare me more than anything I’ve already seen?”

Why can’t he understand? “These people are  _dangerous_.”

Cullen’s eyes glint. “So am I.” He smiles again, but this time it’s feral rather than amused.

The Lion of Honnleath. Nothing tame or gentle about that title, no matter how often Dorian has teased Cullen about it.

Silence again, while they stare at each other across the desk. Well, silent except for the blood pounding in Dorian’s ears. He wants Cullen here, and he wants Cullen safe, and he can’t have both.

And he’s weak, he’s always been weak and too easily tempted. “Do you know what it would do to me,” he asks in a low voice, “if something were to happen to you?”

Cullen draws a breath, then releases it without speaking. Instead, he circles the desk, watching his feet as if he expects that the rug might try to bite him. Dorian turns to follow his progress, pushing the chair back to give himself room, then blinking when Cullen goes to one knee at his feet.

“Do you know what it would do to  _me_ ,” Cullen says, “if something were to happen to  _you_?” He cups Dorian’s cheek, his palm warm and rough and familiar. So familiar Dorian closes his eyes against the tears that suddenly burn behind them.

The kiss is just as familiar, though it’s nothing more than a brush of Cullen’s lips against his.

“I know I can’t protect you from everything,” Cullen whispers, “but let me do what I can. Please.”

His voice is raw, a voice Dorian has never heard in daylight. It’s a voice that belongs to the small hours of the morning, when Cullen wakes from a nightmare and clings to him in the darkness.

It’s a voice he never wants to hear again.

When Dorian’s fingers find it, Cullen’s cheek is stubbled, as if he’s forgotten to shave for several days. That, too, is so familiar it makes Dorian smile as he asks, “Will Adaar hate me forever if I steal her commander away from her?”

He can feel Cullen’s answering smile against his palm. “As she all but packed my bags for me, I think she won’t hold a grudge too long.”

Dorian swallows and asks the real question. “Will you hate me, one day, for taking you away from the Inquisition?”

Cullen kisses him again, but this time, he doesn’t lean back after. “I did my part to save the world,” he says against Dorian’s mouth, his fingers curled tightly in Dorian’s hair. “I think now I’d like to save something for myself.”

**Author's Note:**

> [on Tumblr (for now, anyway)](https://dragonflies-and-katydids.tumblr.com/post/156246206687/i-saw-youre-asking-for-prompts-how-about-cullen)


End file.
